Local government in the United States is structured in accordance with the laws of the various individual states, territories, and the District of Columbia. Typically each state has at least two separate tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Some states further have their counties divided into townships. There are several different types of local government at the municipal level, generally reflecting the needs of different levels of population densities; typical examples include the city, town, borough, and village. The types and nature of these municipal entities varies from state to state. Many rural areas and even some suburban areas of many states have no municipal government below the county level, while others do not operate under a distinct county government at all. In other places the different tiers are merged, for example as a consolidated city–county in which city and county functions are managed by a single municipal government, or in the case of towns in New England, which in some states have completely replaced the county as the unit of local government.
The local governments described above are classified general purpose local governments by the United States Census Bureau. In addition, there are also often local or regional special purpose local governments. Special purpose governments include special districts that exist for specific purposes, such as to provide fire protection, sewer service, transit service or to manage water resources, and in particular school districts to manage schools. Such special purpose districts often encompass areas in multiple municipalities.
Read more about Local Government In The United States: History of Local Government in The United States, Types of Local Government, Councils or Associations of Governments, Dillon's Rule, Institutions, Indian Reservations, Census of Local Government, Examples of Local Government in Individual States
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“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“These native villages are as unchanging as the woman in one of their stories. When she was called before a local justice he asked her age. “I have 45 years.” “But,” said the justice, “you were forty-five when you appeared before me two years ago.” “Señor Judge,” she replied proudly, drawing herself to her full height, “I am not of those who are one thing today and another tomorrow!””
—State of New Mexico, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The traveler to the United States will do well ... to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)